Angers nodded; the three of us, and Lucas who joined us a few minutes later, took a table under the palms.

Much of the conversation was concerned with the affairs of the Citizens’ Party. While if flowed past me, I had a chance to study my companions.

There was Lucas, of course. I had seen enough of him in action to know that he was a brilliant lawyer — he lacked Fats Brown’s gift of identifying himself with the cause he was pleading, but his faculty of analyzing arguments with detachment more than compensated. He struck me as a cold man; he could be an angry man — as I had seen when Sam Francis killed Guerrero — but I doubted if he had it in him to be fanatical.

Nor had Angers. Dogmatic, certainly, and stubborn. But — well, Angers was almost too much of a type. The reason was probably not far to seek: perhaps it was simply the common expatriate habit of overemphasizing one’s personal background in reaction against alien surroundings.

I’d have been hard put to it to find a reply if someone had asked me, “Do you like Angers?” His own manner discouraged any strong feeling of like or dislike toward him. I should probably have replied, in an unconscious imitation of Angers’ own British accent, “Oh, he’s all right!”

Which was probably exactly what Angers himself would desire.

As for Arrio, I characterized him as an actor. A man who had adopted a role, probably when young, and found that it served him so well he eventually came to live it. I found the role rather impressive; having decided that the man had become the part he played, I could not be less impressed simply because it was a part. Now the role and the individual were inseparable.

So here were three leading citizens, leading voices of those who spoke in Ciudad de Vados. Steady men. Probably as reliable personally as they were solid in their business. I had, I realized, still been unconsciously worrying about Dalban’s threats and trying to mask the fact from myself. Now I had been assured of Arrio’s support, which seemed worth having, and I felt relieved of an imaginary burden.

The meal broke up, Arrio apologizing and explaining that he had to go to the television studios and record an interview for tonight’s current affairs program; they were doing a feature on his new appointment. I asked him to give my regards to Señora Cortes and Francisco Cordoban. Wryly, I wondered in passing whether they would put out a picture of Arrio in the guise of an angel; certainly he would look better in the role than I had.

When he had left us, Lucas, Angers, and I strolled back across the square. After a moment, deep in thought, Angers spoke up.

“Relieved at not having to face a cross-examination by Brown, Hakluyt?”

“In a way,” I admitted.

“Oh, he is one large bluff!” said Lucas offhandedly. “Did he perhaps say to you that he ate expert witnesses for lunch?”

“As a matter of fact—”

Lucas nodded, smiling faintly. “He said the same to our good Dr. Ruiz, but he was not taken in. Strange about what has happened, no?”

“Strange?” echoed Angers. “The sort of thing one might have expected, surely.”

“I suppose it is,” Lucas agreed abstractedly. “I hear — did I tell you, or did Luis? — that el obispo is also tonight on television, by his special request.”

“Really?” said Angers in a slightly bored tone; presumably the whim of a Popish bishop held little interest for him.

“And I have heard — just a rumor, true, but I have definitely heard — that he intends to speak his mind on the matter of morality in Vados.”

Their eyes met, and it was instantly clear what Lucas was implying.

Angers smiled reluctantly. “Not by any chance a sermon on the text, ‘The wages of sin is death’?”

“Anything is possible,” shrugged Lucas. We had reached the sidewalk and had paused in a group with traffic rolling by. “I gather he is considering giving permission for the dead girl to be buried in consecrated ground.”

I butted in. “You mean he’s already made up his episcopal mind that she was murdered — didn’t kill herself? Look, I saw Fats Brown and his wife and brother-in-law yesterday evening in a bar — in fact I drove them home. I heard his side of the story, and he swore blind he had never seen this — this tramp before.”

They were both looking at me with quizzical expressions.

“Speaking professionally, Señor Hakluyt,” said Lucas after a pause, “I assure you that what Brown may have said to you is of no interest in law. If he is innocent, why has he hidden? Oh, admittedly many things might have happened — she might have thrown herself from the window in desperation, she might have been frightened and fallen back, she might have been struck in an argument, all possible! Yet Brown’s brother-in-law tells us that she was hard and self-possessed and seemed well in control of herself. Not distraught, so that she was likely to resort to suicide when she knew she could obtain — uh — sufficient provision for herself from the father of her unborn child.”

“Aside from the fact that he categorically denied being the father,” I insisted, “Brown told me she wanted ten thousand dolaros, and he didn’t have that much.”

“He could probably have got it,” shrugged Angers. “No, he obviously panicked; presumably, then, he felt he was in too awkward a position to defend himself. If it were just a matter of money, I’m sure he would have been worth ten thousand to the National Party as a capable, experienced liar.”

“Lawyer?” suggested Lucas.

“I know what I mean,” said Angers, and barked a laugh.

Lucas glanced at his watch and started. “Well, excuse me,” he said. “I have much business to attend to. Hasta la vista, Donald — Señor Hakluyt.” He gave a polite little dip of the head and went across the road.

“Well, I think things are going to liven up a little in Vados now,” Angers commented. “With Arrio and Lucas working together, we should see progress.”

“You think Arrio a better choice than Guerrero?”

“No question. Excellent fellow, Arrio — man of decision. I like men like that.”

I didn’t watch Arrio on television that evening, or the bishop. But when I passed the little wall shrine in the market on my way back to my hotel, dead beat at one in the morning, there were several candles burning. I glanced around for any sign of men with clubs like those who had greeted me just after Guerrero’s death, saw no one, and ventured to examine a slip of paper stuck to one of the unburnt candles.

It said on it, “Estrelita Jaliscos.”

Poor Fats, I thought. I remembered how pathetic he had been the night before. Then I recalled how drunk he had been, also, and how unstably poised between anger and self-pity. It had to be admitted: Lucas was right. So many things could have happened to Estrelita Jaliscos; one of them might conceivably have been murder.

By now it had become a habit for me to read Liberdad and Tiempo every morning; my original intention to improve my Spanish had become secondary, as I spoke it much of the time. Now I read the papers to keep abreast of what was happening in the city. I took up Liberdad first as usual the next morning and found that of course it had everything its way today.

The appointment of Arrio was the main story, together with a report of what he had said on television. Next to it was an account of Bishop Cruz’s diatribe on Vadeano morals, and that was so strongly worded it made me blink. According to the bishop, Ciudad de Vados was going to be mentioned on Judgment Day in the next breath after Sodom.

He didn’t mention Fats Brown by name, but there were a dozen barbed references to those who lead the young into sin, and with it there was an ingenious argument to the effect that, since this rush of depravity in what had formerly been (so the bishop stated) a highly moral and reputable city could be traced to its source in the shantytowns and more especially Sigueiras’s slum, then Brown’s spirited defense of Sigueiras must have been due to a desire to perpetuate these hotbeds of vice.